How to Conduct an Email Funnel Audit in Five Easy Steps

An email funnel audit is a process of reviewing every step of your email marketing process to ensure you see proper conversions. I know you don’t want to waste time, resources, and worst — subscribers — due to poor email content, poor understanding of your audience, or the email marketing process altogether. However, proper review, implementation, and reform are required to run a successful email marketing campaign. Furthermore, if you want to see a high return on investment, as the average is forty-eight dollars for every one dollar spent, then you must audit your funnels.

Here are the five steps to conducting an email funnel audit:

Step One: Evaluate Your Goals

The first step to any marketing process is to determine your goals and evaluate them. This means step one of the auditing process includes comparing your goals to the campaign materials you created. For each campaign you have, create a list of the most important goals. Then go through the content and review it to be sure it aligns with these goals. A great way to organize this step is to create a chart for each section for your email marketing funnel to the left and then the goals established for each campaign at the top.

Then as you read through the material, add each section to the goals you outlined. In the end, each campaign should be neatly organized and in its proper spot to achieve the goal properly. For example, if you notice your call-to-action in one campaign completes a different goal, then you can see that your campaigns are not properly organized to achieve your goals. Your call-to-action should be the same in each to be more successful.

Step Two: Review Your Metrics

Next, take a look at your metrics. The most important metrics include your bounce rate, open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, list growth rate, total revenue earned per email, and total revenue earned per subscriber. Each of these metrics can work as red flags to help pinpoint areas of concern or highlight your strengths. For example, a high open-rate with a low click-through rate shows your titles are strong; however, you lost your readers’ interest somewhere along the way. Meaning you should review your email copy and call-to-action to be sure they align with your target audience and marketing goals.

Step Three: Analyze Email Flows, Segmentation, and Sequences

For step three, you need to review the flow of your sequences and ensure they are segmented appropriately. The more focused your email campaigns are, the more likely you are to increase your conversions. So be sure they are not too long or short and that your subscribers are in the right sequence. It is important that cold subscribers, for example, are added to sequences and segmentations that nurture them and get them reengaged.

Step Four: Inspect Email Campaign Value, Variety, and Structure

Take the time to read the content and compare it to your buyer personas. Be sure the content you are sending has various types of content, such as educational and promotional. Too much promotional content will be viewed as spam and send you straight to their spam folder. Confirm that each campaign and email have the proper structure as well as quality content and titles.

Step Five: Fix, Plan and Execute

To wrap up the auditing process, you need to highlight the red flags or areas to improve and develop a plan of action. For example, if you noticed material in the wrong campaigns, adjust it. If you saw your unsubscribe rate is higher in one campaign than the other, you need to inspect the content quality further. Then whatever changes you make, set a short deadline to track and repeat the review to ensure the changes you made were appropriate.

Overall, the auditing process is designed to ensure each step of the email marketing processed is being executed appropriately to ensure you see the return on investment you need to make all the work and time investment worth it.